NirBlog

On August 26 2004, exactly 15 years ago, I purchased the nirsoft.net domain.
NirSoft Web site was actually  established around 2 – 3 years earlier, but it was hosted in some free hosting services and it was very hard
to keep the Web site alive, because all these free hosting services suspended NirSoft Web site after some time, saying that it had too much traffic…

Today, there are still a few tools on nirsoft.net that were originally released on 2001-2003 (Before nirsoft.net domain was purchased) – NirCmd, IECookiesView, Mail PassView, Dialupass, and maybe a few others.
If you want to see the NirSoft homepage from 15 years ago, you can take a look at the web.archive.org Web site, there is a copy of NirSoft homepage from September 2004:

nirsoft.net from Septermber 2004

For the 15th birthday of nirsoft.net domain – you get a small surprise: A Web page with new Pre-release tools.
These tools are still in development stage , and they still don’t have separated Web page, unique icons, help file, translations, and so on.
If you choose to download and try to use them  – do it very carefully !

You can find the Pre-release Web page in the following link:

NirSoft Pre-release Tools

2 days ago, on July 6 2013 ,around 07:00 GMT, nirsoft.net Web site moved to a new data center and it’s now hosted in SoftLayer data center at Washington DC .  Hopefully, this data center change will reduce the website  downtime problems to minimum.

The download page of NirLauncher package now also allows you to download all translations of the desired language in one zip file.  After you download the right translation package, you can extract it into the NirSoft subfolder of NirLauncher package, and then every utility that you run will be loaded with your language, as long as the translation for this utility is available.

The translations packs are automatically created and updated each time that a new versions of NirLauncher package is released.

For now, I added the translation packs for 10 languages only, but it’s possible that more languages will be added according to users requests.

in extension.nirsoft.net, a Web site which contains file extension information submitted by users of FileTypesMan utility,  the Popularity field is now active, and displays one of the following values: Low, Medium, High, and Very High.

The Popularity is calculated according to the number of submissions received for the specified record.

usbspeed.nirsoft.net,  a Web site containing speed tests results of USB flash drives submitted by users of USBDeview utility, accumulated a total of more than 5500 speed tests.

So it’s time to do something with this speed tests database and make it more useful: I created a new summary page, which contains the average, maximum,  and minimum values for both read speed and write speed. This page only display the information for common USB drives that accumulated at least 5 speed tests.

You can view the summary page of USB speed tests in this link.

Due to severe network issue on the data center that my server is located, all NirSoft Web sites were down for more than an hour.  NirSoft is now back online again and everything is Ok.

Notice:  The latest version of NirLauncher package is now available at http://launcher.nirsoft.net/

As I promised a few weeks ago, the Beta version of NirLauncher, with a package of more than 100 utilities of NirSoft, is available to download.

NirLauncher Screenshot

Before you go to the download link, it’s important that you read the following guidelines:

• For now, the download link of this utilities package is a little restrictive. I only allow to download it 5 times per day for each IP address. So please don’t download this package with any ‘download accelerator’ software that open multiple connections. If you do so, the download might be failed and your IP address will be blocked from downloading this file for a few hours.
  Also, the download link won’t work if you put it on  other Web sites.
  I’ll try to gradually reduce these restrictions as long as it won’t eat my server resources.
• Antivirus False Positives – This package contains more than 100 utilities, and if you have any Antivirus on your computer, there is a very high chance that it’ll falsely detect one or more of these utilities as Virus/Trojan/Spyware/Malware or anything else.
  It’s also possible that your Antivirus will simply delete some of the utilities or prevent you from running them without displaying any alert.
  In any case, please don’t flood my email address with messages like “You have virus in your utilities package”   or “After I extract your files, some of them are deleted” or “I double-click xyz utility and nothing happens”.  All complaints about false virus alerts, utilities that cannot be executed, and disappearing files should be sent to the Antivirus companies that cause these troubles.
  You are also welcomed to read my Blog post from a few months ago: Antivirus companies cause a big headache to small developers.
• You might find out that some of my utilities in this package are missing. For now, to avoid from including very old utilities, my scripts that build the NirLauncher package automatically take only utilities that have been updated in the last 1000 days.  Some of my very old utilities might still save the settings into the Registry, and I don’t want to include them in NirLauncher package, because this package should be fully portable.
  Later, I’ll gradually check my old utilities and some of them will be possibly upgraded to be included in future releases of NirLauncher package.
• Currently, the software groups (categories) in NirLauncher are not the best choice, I simply took them with automatic scripts from my main utilities page. I hope that I’ll create better software groups in future versions.
• Start using NirLauncher:  In order to start using NirLauncher, simply create a new folder in your USB flash drive or in any other drive, and then extract all files of the package into the new folder.
  You should not extract the files into the root directory of your USB flash drive, because the package contains too much files.
  After you extracted the package, simply run the NirLauncher.exe executable.
• After running NirLauncher, here’s some tips for using it:
  • You can use F7 and F8 keys to move to the next and previous software group.
  • When you select a single item, the ‘Description’ and ‘Web Page URL’  become a link that you can click. Clicking the ‘Description’ opens the help file,  and clicking the ‘Web Page URL’ opens the right utility Web page. If you are not pleased from this feature, you can disable it from Options->Advanced Options (set all click options to none)
  • If you want to view a longer description of each utility that you select, check the ‘Show Description Text’ under the options menu. However, be aware that these description texts were taken from the pad files of my utilities, and they are not always updated to the latest features of each utility.
  • If you want to run a utility with command-line parameters, change the current directory, and so on, the ‘Advanced Run’ is the right option that you need.
  • There is also a generic ‘Advanced Run’ window that affects all utilities that you execute with the standard ‘run’ option: Options -> Default Run Settings. For example, if you open the ‘Default Run Settings’ window and select the ‘Run in full screen mode’ option, all console application that you run will be opened in full screen.
  • If you use the x64 version of Windows, and you click on a utility that have a separated x64 version, NirLauncher automatically run the x64 executable of the utility. The x64 executable filenames  in the package are in UtilityName-x64.exe format.
• Warning for Windows 7/Vista users: For now, do not run NirLauncher.exe with ‘Run As Administrator’ option.  It seems that using this option cause my ‘Network Password Recovery’ utility and a few others to crash lsass.exe process if you run them from NirLauncher that was executed with ‘Run As Administrator’ option. The reason for this problem is still unknown, and more research is required to fix it.
  If you want to force a specific utility to run with admin permissions, simply use the ‘Run As Administrator’ option (Ctrl+M) inside NirLauncher.

Here’s a few optional tips for more advanced users. If you don’t need them, you can skip to the download link in the bottom of the post.

• The package contains a file named ‘nirsoft.nlp’ (NLP = NirLauncher Package) . This file contains the list of all software groups and utilities that are displayed in NirLauncher.  It’s a very simple text file, like .ini file of Windows, that you can easily view and edit with any text editor. So, although the current version of  NirLauncher doesn’t support editing, you can change the software groups and utilities list displayed in NirLauncher by editing this file.
• When editing the .nlp file, it’s recommended that any file that you specify will be in relative path. For example: if you want to add an executable file located in a subfolder named ‘MyPackage’ under the main launcher folder, you should specify it as ‘MyPackage\myfile.exe’ instead of ‘i:\nirsoft\MyPackage\myfile.exe’.
• The ‘help’ value in .nlp file specifies that help file (.hlp or .chm). However, if the help filename has the same name of the executable (like cports.exe and cports.chm), NirLauncher will detect it automatically.
• The ‘AppName’  value specifies the application name, while the ‘ShortDesc’ value specifies a short description.  If you don’t specify these values, NirLauncher will take them from the version resource of the .exe file.
• The ‘LongDesc’ value is the text that appeared in the yellow description box of ‘Show Description Text’ option.
• NirLauncher also allows you to add additional software packages. Just for example, here’s how to add Sysinternals Suite into NirLauncher:
  1. Go to Sysinternals Suite Web page, and download the latest zip file.
  2. Extract the zip package of Sysinternals into a new folder located in the same drive of NirLauncher.
  3. Download the sysinternals.nlp that I created for Sysinternals Suite, and save it into the same folder with all Sysinternals files.
  4. Drag this sysinternals.nlp into the main window of NirLauncher. You can also use the “Add Software Package” from the Launcher menu.
  5. If you did it right, you should now see the Sysinternals package in the main window of NirLauncher. You can switch between the packages by using F3 and F4 keys.
  6. You may notice that full description text and Web Page URL are empty. This is because they are not filled in the sysinternals.nlp that I created.
     However, the ‘Open Web Page’  option (Ctrl+W) will still work properly for most of the SysInternals utilities even without the URL information, thanks to the “I’m feeling lucky” feature of Google. When there is no URL, I simply send the utility name to Google, and the first page in the search result is automatically opened.

Finally, here’s the download link:

Download NirLauncher package with more than 100 utilities

Zip File Information:  (to verify that the downloaded file is Ok)
MD5: b18f2706b2737128a9f7fd01648f5e38
SHA1: 353bd70b747dc73f58daec120df25a23330d0545
Size: 6,685,806 bytes
Number of files in the Zip: 241

I created a new Web site which provides general information about file extensions and which software can open or use them: http://extension.nirsoft.net.
Currently, this Web site is based on extension information sent from my FileTypesMan utility by me and by some other users. It’s possible that in the future, I’ll also  enable the visitors  of extension.nirsoft.net Web site to add their own extension description and remarks.

extension.nirsoft.net Web site

I also added a new option for both FileTypesMan utility and ShellMenuView utilities that allows you to easily open your Web browser in the right file extension page.

If you want to help this extension database to grow, you are welcomed to  add extension information stored in your own computer into http://extension.nirsoft.net Web site, by using the ‘Send Report To extension.nirsoft.net’ option.  Full instructions about how to do it are available in the main page of extension.nirsoft.net Web site.

Also, be aware that this ‘Send Report’ option only send general information about the extension and which program opens it on your computer. It doesn’t send any personal or private information that might reveal your identity.

USBDeview has a new feature that allows you to test the read and write speed of your USB flash drive. But the more interesting feature is the ability the submit the speed test result to http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net, so you and other people will be able to easily compare the speed of many USB flash drives.

In the first 24 hours of this USBDeview release, I already received more than 50
speed test records, which is quite impressive.

However, in this growing speed tests list, there is a lacking of 32 GB and 64 GB flash drives, probably because these flash drives are still quite rare and expensive, and most people simply don’t purchase them.
(I must admit that I also have only 16GB flash drive, and I won’t purchase the larger flash drives until their price will decrease…)
Just for example: The price of ‘Kingston DataTraveler 64 GB’ at Amazon is $148, and there are some other 64 GB flash drives that are even more expensive.

If you already have one of these expensive 32GB/64GB flash drives, I’ll be glad if you test them with USBDeview and submit the test result to http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net

Also, be aware to the difference between USB Flash Drives and USB external hard disk drives.
Flash Drives are memory devices that stores the data in flash memory, while USB external hard disks are regular hard disks plugged to USB that stores the data in magnetic surfaces, like the hard disk inside your computer.
Currently, the largest available flash drives can store up to 64 GB of data, while external hard disk drives are avialble in much larger sizes, and some of them can store more than 1 TB (1000 GB) of data.

I created a new Web site containing information about every DLL in the system32 directory of Windows 7 Release Candidate.

Each DLL page contains the following information:

• Version information – product name, company, file desctiption, and so on.
• DLL popularity – Shows you how many DLLs are statically linked to this file.
• List of files that are statically linked to the specified file. Displayed only when the number of files in the list is 10 or less.
• Sections information – Shows you the code and data sections in the DLL.
• Resources information – Displays a summary of resources stored in the DLL (icons, bitmaps, cursors, dialog-boxes, and so on)
• Icons Thumbnail – A Thumbnail with all icons stored in the DLL.
• Cursors Thumbnail – A Thumbnail with all cursors stored in the DLL.
• Strings information – Displays a list of strings stored in this DLL (Currently the list is limited to 100 strings)
• Diaogbox information – Displays a list of dialog-boxes captions in this DLL (Currently the list is limited to 100 dialog-boxes)
• Static Linking – Displays the list of DLL files that are statically linked to the DLL. When a DLL is loaded the DLL in this Static Linking list are also loaded with it.
• Exports/Imports List – A list of all imported and exported functions.

There are also some “Top DLL” statitics tables that shows the DLL files with largest number of icons, DLL files with largest number of cursors, and so on.

DLL File Information for Windows 7